1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system and method for determining quality of written user reviews or professional reviews of products or services. In particular, the present invention is directed to a system and method that allows determination of the quality of user reviews in an automated manner so that user reviews may be distinguished from each other for further use or processing.
2. Description of Related Art
Many different products and services are provided from product and service vendors. For example, manufacturers of a particular category of product offer various models in their product line, each model targeting a particular group of users and/or meeting the specific needs of a market segment. In particular, manufacturers of automobiles, vacuum cleaners, cameras, computers, etc., all generally manufacture a variety of models of their products. In many instances, each model from each manufacturer and models from differing manufacturers have different features and/or attributes.
For example, in the product category of vacuum cleaners, various models having different combinations of features and/or attributes are presently available. These features and/or attributes for vacuum cleaners include bag/bagless operation, motor power, attachments, exhaust filtration, price, etc. In another example, for the product category of digital cameras, features and/or attributes include optical and digital zoom capability, pixel count, the presence, type and size of a view screen, flash capacity, memory capacity, price, etc.
Of course, this is also applicable to providers of services as well in that they typically provide numerous different services in their field. Such providers of services may include telecommunications companies such as wireless service providers, utilities such as cable and satellite broadcast providers, travel companies including airlines, cruise lines and travel agencies, etc.
In the products arena, the vast number of manufacturers and models available for each product category, and the disparity in features and/or attributes between the products of a product category, can make a consumer's purchasing decision very difficult. Of course, analogous difficulties would be encountered by consumers of services as well.
Companies such as CNET Networks, Inc. (hereinafter “CNET”) which operates www.cnet.com™ provide information regarding consumer and technology oriented products such as electronics and computer products for buyers, sellers, and suppliers of technology, as well as any other interested user. In addition to providing raw data and information, many different products in a particular product category are evaluated by editors of CNET for various features and/or attributes and rated. Moreover, the editors often provide written narrative product summaries that highlight various features of the particular product, and discuss strengths and weaknesses of the reviewed product in comparison to other comparable products. The information and narrative product summaries provided by CNET and others regarding various products in a product category may be used by consumers to facilitate potential purchase decisions.
Due to the large number of products available in the market place, providing information and narrative product summaries for all of the products that are available can be very costly. In addition, actual user's experience with a particular product or service may be different than the experiences of the editors that provide such product reviews and summaries.
Various websites provide forums for users to review the various products, merchants from which these products can be purchased, and/or services. For example, the website www.eopinions.com™ allows users of various products to provide reviews and opinions regarding products and services identified in various categories. Moreover, websites such as www.mysimon.com™ and www.yahoo.com™ provide shopping links and search features which allows a consumer to purchase products from one or more on-line merchants. These websites further provide links to allow actual users of the products to provide their review, and allows potential consumers to view these reviews.
Consequently, the user reviews that are provided by actual consumers of products and services further provide valuable information which can be used by consumers to facilitate potential purchase decisions. Moreover, the user's opinion information that is provided in such user reviews contain information regarding consumer experience with the product or service being reviewed which is very valuable to the product manufacturers and/or service provider.
Article entitled “Mining the Peanut Gallery: Opinion Extraction and Semantic Classification of Product Reviews” by Dave et al. discloses a method for automatically distinguishing between positive and negative reviews regarding a particular product by focusing on the semantic orientation of words in the review. This reference is primarily directed to the determination of whether a particular review of a product is positive or negative, and does not address whether a particular review is of high or low quality and helpfulness.
However, the user reviews vary significantly in their quality and their helpfulness, whether the review is positive or negative. Whereas one user review may provide valuable, well phrased opinions of a user regarding a product, other reviews may be poorly written and not be very helpful. Some websites such as www.amazon.com™ further allows the readers of the user reviews to rate the reviews viewed, for example, as being helpful or not helpful. However, there are no known methods or systems for facilitating substantially automated synthesis and/or analysis of the opinion information that is provided in such user reviews so as to allow determination of the quality of user reviews so that user reviews of varying quality can be distinguished from one another for further use or processing.
Therefore, there exists an unfulfilled need for methods and systems for facilitating synthesis and/or analysis of the opinion information that is provided in user reviews. In particular, there exists an unfulfilled need for such methods or systems that facilitates determination of the quality of user reviews so that user reviews can be distinguished for further use or processing.